Hope for a Brighter Future on a Darker Broadway

For the casts and crews of Broadway, no night of the week brings quite the relief of a Sunday, when most productions go dark, and the companies of artists look forward to Monday off.

Yet the prospect of darkness and days off came with a different meaning this past Sunday night, as nine Broadway productions — including “Hairspray,” “Young Frankenstein,” “Boeing-Boeing,” “13” and “Grease” — closed for good, some as scheduled, and some as a result of declining audiences in grim economic times.

And so after the shows there were parties, of course, with a good deal of laughter and tears here and there, and a lot of white wine and hard-to-identify canapés. But there was also a sense of heavy reckoning — over the high price of Broadway tickets, over the future directions of theater actors’ careers, and over the real sadness that can accompany a production marquee dimming for a final time.

“For me, it feels like putting a pet to sleep, but not because it’s sick — because you can’t afford dog food,” Marc Shaiman, who was the composer of the music and the co-author of the lyrics for “Hairspray,” said during its closing-night party at the club Arena. “So I can’t make peace with it — if I had seen it sick and dying, I could make more peace with it.”

While the closing of “Hairspray,” which opened on Broadway in 2002, was an opportunity for Mr. Shaiman to reflect on the thrill and pride of working on the show, he admitted that the occasion also stirred feelings of professional jealousy.

Photo

The cast of the musical Hairspray taking a bow at the Neil Simon Theater. The show was among nine Broadway productions that closed on Sunday night.Credit
James Estrin/The New York Times

“I’ll be perfectly honest, I look at some shows that will continue to run and run, and I don’t really begrudge their success,” Mr. Shaiman said. “But I have to wonder, when you look at the show today, and you see a show that brings such joy to an audience and yet has something to say, I do feel, as obnoxious as it is to say out loud, ’Why not us? Why can’t we continue?’ ” Sonia Friedman, a producer of the comedy “Boeing-Boeing,” took a more sanguine view at her company’s party at 44 1/2. She noted that her show’s star, Mark Rylance, and the rest of the cast had concluded their contracts, and that the show, which opened on Broadway in May, had recouped its capitalization, and that it simply did not make sense to bring on a new cast and continue.

“I never set out with the thought that I’m going to run the same play for multiple seasons — plays don’t work that way,” she said. “Everything has a time to end.”

If Sunday night was a time to mourn shows, there was also ample reason for some producers and actors to see new creative prospects on the horizon, rather than just financial clouds.

“There feels like a new energy or a new hope,” said the Broadway casting agent Bernard Telsey, who is involved in coming productions, including “Blithe Spirit” and “9 to 5.” He also noted that auditions were starting for two new planned productions for next season, “Spider-Man” and “Catch Me if You Can.”

The high cost of theater tickets, and whether people can afford them in 2009, was a refrain heard at one party after another on Sunday night. Allan S. Gordon — a producer of “Rent,” “Cry-Baby” and “Hairspray,” all of which closed over the last year, and who is closing “Monty Python’s Spamalot” this Sunday — said he expected to see serious conversations within the theater world about ways to lower ticket prices.

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The director Jack OBrien, right, and the choreographer Jerry Mitchell with the cast of "Hairspray."Credit
James Estrin/The New York Times

“They’ll happen by necessity — not voluntarily, you’ll have no alternative,” Mr. Gordon said. “You see that now, the two-for-ones. Bring a kid for nothing, whatever they come up with.”

(Indeed, some cast members of one musical production that closed on Sunday night grumbled that they had been told that they could not bring guests to the party because of cost concerns.)

Kerry Butler, an original member of the “Hairspray” cast and the star of “Xanadu,” which closed in September, said she believed that “everyone should take a pay cut” so that theater tickets could be reduced in price.

“The crew, the actors — if we’re in a recession, let’s all take a pay cut,” Ms. Butler said, before adding, “My agent will kill me.”

With four more shows set to close over the next two weeks, several actors said they were starting to look elsewhere for work.

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Monica Caraballo, the head porter at "Boeing-Boeing."Credit
David Goldman for The New York Times

“I feel fortunate right now because I just got a record contract in Nashville,” said Laura Bell Bundy, a star of “Hairspray” and “Legally Blonde.” “I’m leaving Broadway at the right time. I hope to be back soon. I feel very lucky in that way.”

Marissa Jaret Winokur, who was the original Tracy Turnblad in “Hairspray” and returned to the role for its final weeks, said that she would soon be hosting a dancing-cum-weight-loss show for the Oxygen Network, partly, she said, because there were no opportunities here in theater for her right now.

“I wish there was another Broadway show for me, but there isn’t yet,” Ms. Winokur said.

Another “Hairspray” producer, Margo Lion, said she was trying to look past the night of closings and toward future projects, like the musical production of “Catch Me if You Can” — based on the 2002 movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and the autobiography by Frank Abagnale Jr. — that she hopes to bring to Broadway next season.

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Over at Sardi’s, the cast of “Dividing the Estate,” Horton Foote’s play about greed in a caustic Texas family, chatted over white wine and canapés about their plans for the winter. While they are scattering for now, most of the actors will reunite at Hartford Stage in May for a run of about five weeks.

“We’re saying goodbye, but not goodbye — goodbye for now,” said Hallie Foote, who plays the covetous daughter Mary Jo in “Dividing the Estate,” and is the playwright’s daughter.

Sitting a few feet away from her was Mr. Foote, who is 92 and still writing plays. He expressed a this-too-shall-pass attitude about the current economic doldrums, describing a time — next season, or the season after, maybe — when some sort of stability would return to Broadway.

“I have more plays in me that I want to see performed on Broadway,” Mr. Foote said. “And I’m sure I will.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: As 9 Runs End, Hope for a Brighter Future on a Darker Broadway. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe